


we laugh and it pits the world against us

by clairvoie



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Abigail Hobbs Lives, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Development, Developing Relationship, Episode Fix-It: s02e13 Mizumono, Eventual Relationships, Gen, M/M, On the Run, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Episode: s02e13 Mizumono, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Unhealthy Relationships, a fix-it in a way, cuz fuck u hannibal
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-05
Updated: 2017-11-15
Packaged: 2019-01-29 22:34:52
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 6,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12640671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/clairvoie/pseuds/clairvoie
Summary: A re-imagining of Mizumono, towards the end, and the consequences of those changes."If everything that can happen happens, then you can never really do the wrong thing."





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I am writing this because "Mizumono" is a mess of pain and drowns its inhabitants in miscommunication and betrayal by deceit, and I think we could use a different outcome. I'm also writing this because I think it's interesting to imagine all the different versions of that lifetime. Like Abigail(Will) says, there is never really a wrong version.
> 
> The title is from a Richard Siken poem. (of fucking course)

Make  
What we believe  
Don't we  
Make what we can

 

 

"You were supposed to leave." He said through slightly-gritted teeth, as he turned slowly. He kept his eyes trailed to the ground as he shifted, until he came face-to-face with Hannibal and stopped moving like a deer in headlights. His stomach dropped at the sight of him.

Hannibal stood an arm's length away. He was stoic in his posture and covered in blood like a victor, yet his eyes painted a contrasting sentiment.

 

"We couldn't leave without you." He said, as if it should have been obvious to Will. His brows were knit close together, his lips pulled into a line of forced neutrality. Will did not step back as Hannibal moved closer in silence. He knew a saner person would have ran, would have pulled the gun, and yet, despite his better judgment, he stayed put.

 

The hand that Hannibal tentatively placed against Will's cheek was warm and grounding against his rain-soaked skin. Hannibal had almost shaken as he raised his hand, had looked almost afraid to touch the man in front of him. As if he would break, as if he would vanish, as if this was the last time. 

Every nerve was on fire in Will's body, his mind racing at the thought of Abigail's flesh and blood behind him in the kitchen, at the somber-faced man in front of him who seemed to be retaining himself inside his seams. Like a crazed tide pushing against the city barricades, he could feel the foundations shifting and breaking beneath his very feet. It was make or break, now.

 

"I- I..." He began saying. He began to shake and the words seemingly started to tumble from his lips.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do. I wanted to- I wanted to come clean. I wanted to tell you, I wanted to tell you everything but every time I tried to start, nothing would- There was so much. The-" His rambling was abruptly cut off by the hand on his cheek sliding down to his neck.

 

Quick as lighting Hannibal's thumb was pressing into the thick of Will's neck, just beneath his jaw, the 4 fingers trapping the other side of his windpipe. The wall and his back collided in a sharp jerk as Hannibal ran him backwards, almost lifting his feet from the floor. There was no more sentimental pain in the eyes before him, no more soft and sinking emotion.

Anger and hurt dripped from Hannibal's teeth as he spoke, "I gave you a chance," he said. "To take it all back. To tell the truth. You knew this, and yet you chose not to take it. Now here you are, grovelling for mercy. You take for granted the length of rope I allow you to dangle on, Will."

 

The thumb pressing into Will's neck dug in deeper, assaulting the screaming artery beneath his skin. His heels floated above the floor as Hannibal started to speak again.

 

"You would take my life from me," he began, his voice rising, but corrected himself when he felt Will shake his head. "My freedom then, you would take that from me. Confine me to a prison cell." Hannibal's voice dropped to a harsh whisper. "I have shared with you," he said, his voice thick in his throat. "...and you sell me to the soldiers. I should let you hang."

Though he spoke under a cloak of hostility, Hannibal's expression betrayed his spoken words eventually, as his eyes began to redden and well with a thin layer of tears, and he could feel his fingers loosening despite his convictions.

 

The softening of the hold to his neck breathed air down Will's throat.

 

"You should." He croaked out. His right hand, in a loose fist, circled Hannibal's straining arm as it held Will back against the wall. "Y-you should. I would take it back. If I could." He could barely squeak out the words before the hand tightened against his bones and skin once more.

 

It was futile. The hand growing tired, his head feeling hot and heavy with uncirculated blood swimming to his crown and veins bursting in his eyes. Hannibal's crafted mask was breaking into shards and falling to the floor.

And Abigail. Quiet, terrified Abigail crying softly in the corner, drawn to the glinting knife on the counter and the overwhelming need to freeze like the animal she was.

 

Will's eyes would start to roll towards the back of his head and that would be the end of it all. He could see the fire in front of him, burning misshapen clocks and books on personality disorders and journals full of old names. He could feel Hannibal's breath behind him on his neck, warm and alive. The scent of him threading through his senses and wrapping around him like solid vines, rooting him to the spot. He was back in the office space, drenched in fire lighting and the overwhelming feeling that he was about to spill over like a boiling kettle in seconds.

"Severe and beautiful and timeless." Hannibal said. Achilles and Patroclus laid resting on the desk. Will prayed for divine intervention. He prayed for spontaneous combustion. He prayed for Hannibal to read his mind and forgive him. He prayed to an absent God to make this easy.

Instead, the orange fire crackled into ash and dust and burning bits of paper flew throughout the room as if gravity didn't hold them down in here. Instead, he swallowed silence and tasted blood in his mouth, and he was back in the kitchen again, his feet off the floor as if he were flying. A warm hand the only thing keeping him down.

 

He had bit into his lip, deeply, and blood seeped past his teeth and down his breaking throat. There was a haze in front of his eyes, a fog making the light from the ceiling scatter into waves of colour. A pressure mounted inside his head and all he heard was his heart pounding - _ba bum ba bum ba bum ba bum ba bum_ \-  until he no longer heard a thing.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waking up.

There had always been this feeling… A heavy feeling sneaking into his limbs each time he awoke into consciousness. Attributing it to some kind of generalized anxiety had been the easiest reasoning he could put his finger on in later years of adulthood. He felt silly to look at it as a premonition, but the gut feeling was always there; sometimes resting quietly, sometimes kicking through him on other days. It had been there for years, whispering to him about the Bad Things to come in some silent way.

 

When he killed Garret Jacob Hobbs, he thought that would have been it. If the feeling was intuition, then perhaps it had been pointing to this: an excess of bullets in the body, dying eyes staring vacantly towards the wall, and the itching feeling that he had been followed home by something. Yet, months later, all along the way to Hannibal’s home, the foreboding feeling had never been stronger. It was screaming at him, clawing at his insides, jumping up and down his intestines. 

 

Hannibal’s resentful eyes stilled the pain, stilled the shaking in his body. And he knew. 

* * *

 

He remembered a dream, full of dark space and small instances of imagery and light. At first he saw himself standing by a burning fire, the floor giving way beneath him. Next, a small and sharply curved knife lying on the counter, pristine in its condition, and bouncing light from the bulbs above. The blackness of the dream enveloped him once more, until he felt a searing pain in his abdomen. The sting began to grow, began to wail, and suddenly he was awake, clutching his belly to hold together the gash, but there was nothing there. All he felt was his body intact and harsh breaths wracking his chest up-and-down in violent urgency. 

 

Around him was blue-flower wallpaper, and dimly lit lamps in two out of four corners of the room he rested in. It was a small space, with old wood paneling lining the door frame. The dresser to his left solidly told him it wasn’t a hospital room, more homey than clinical; a revelation that both calmed and confused him even more than he had been to begin with. There were no tubes linked to his veins, no bandages leaking blood, only an aching pain inside his skull and a tenderness encircling his neck. 

 

The door beyond the bed was opened slightly. Small slivers of hallway light peeked in and lit up the red carpeted flooring in long lines. Blinds on the window were drawn. It could be morning, he could be 53 stories up in the air for all he could tell. 

 

“You’re awake,” came a voice from the right-hand corner beside his bed. Will jumped at the sound, startled by the sudden presence in the eerily quiet room he could not place. 

It was Abigail. Breathing, rosy-cheeked and speaking Abigail. Will wanted to surround her completely and forever with his own body and prevent her from vanishing, as he worryingly braced himself for while staring at her.

 

“How…” He began to ask, but the sound cracked and scratched at the back of his throat like sandpaper. Abigail moved to rest her tiny hand on his arm, a touch of reassurance. He could have been asking many things, but she believed she knew exactly what he was desperately reaching for.

“I didn’t know what else to do,” she repeated, an echo of the previous evening’s song. “I just did what he told me. It was the only thing I could do.” Her voice left her throat in a steady pitch, one that could easily disguise itself as collected and rational. Nevertheless, Will could tell by the wide-eyed and bright look in her eyes that she was terrified of something, still. 

 

“Where is he?” He asked. The sound of his voice was small and hoarse, but present regardless. Was Hannibal here? More importantly, where was _here_?  

 

There was a small moment of silence from Abigail. Hesitation from what, Will couldn’t tell; he was still so groggy and the taste of sleep swam in the base of his mouth. His limbs felt heavy. The skin of his neck felt like it had been caressed by burning iron.

“He’s on the porch.” Abigail said, eventually, the tone of her voice unclear to Will. 


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> interlude

Unbalanced feet carried him to the bathroom down the hall. Abigail had walked past him as soon as she was satisfied he wouldn’t tumble to the floor. He had been asleep for 32 hours. 

The hallway was lined with more of the same wood paneling he had seen in the bedroom. It was a small hallway, with somewhat low ceilings, and light coming from one end. One was a dead end, but lead to one more room further down, the other turned to the left and offered no hints as to where it went from there. The architecture was strange to Will. They were no longer in Hannibal’s Baltimore home, that he knew.

 

Inside the bathroom, he switched on the worn light switch. Three uncovered bulbs above the mirror flicked on one after the other, offering small crackling sounds as they fought to regain the spark of electricity. Yellow light eventually filled the small and rectangular shaped room, falling on Will’s tangled hair like a disfigured and fluorescent halo.

He hardly recognized the face staring back at him through the mirror. Burst veins swarmed the whites of his eyes until almost all he could see was a pale demonic flood of red. Travelling down the length of his face, his eyes caught on the colourful state of his neck: like a watercolour painting of a herb garden, his neck was lined with blots of green, blue and yellows. Will placed his hand delicately over the ring of nebula-like colour blots, fingers ghosting over the tender spots beneath the bone of his jaw and sparking tiny stabs of pain down his violated windpipe.

 

Hannibal had choked him into unconsciousness in his kitchen. Not to death. There had been no blades, or white lights at the end of long tunnels. No drive to move his own hand down to grasp his loaded gun, and no anger, even as the blood pooled. His passivity worried him as he replayed the scene in his mind.

Countless times he had told himself, _you’re getting too close, you’re getting too close to it_ , during those moments with Hannibal where he could feel his whole being separating into two. Crawford's voice struck him like a baton at times, shaking him from some deep-reaching feeling that only grew each time he was in Hannibal’s presence. Moral duty and rationality made its case in the forefront of his mind every second, but in some far corner was the pull to something which felt undeniably congruous to his being. Duality of his convictions had been wearing him thin.

 

The hallway carried a small and muffled guitar tune from some far off place in the house. It reminded him of a record his father used to listen to. Like a siren call, he followed it blindly, switching off the yellow lights in the bathroom, effectively laying his discoloured face to rest. Bare feet slipping and sticking to the wood paneled floor, he felt naked.

The end of the hallway gave way to a kitchen, with several windows lining the walls, and an older looking stove by the small sink. The counter-tops seemed to be unchanged since some late decade of the 20th century. Heat traveled from an adjoining room; a fireplace.

Abigail sat at a small, circular table at the corner of the kitchen, reading a novel he could not see the title of, and listening to something folk-y on the windup radio which sat on the window sill above.

She looked up at him briefly, smiling minutely, then locked eyes with her book once again. No conversation today, it seemed. Where to begin, he himself couldn’t quite say. And he didn’t wish to push. Simply being happy to see her sitting, staring at him for a second, was enough by itself.

 

Nearing the front door and the porch beyond it, the cold air travelled through and chilled the skin of his feet. The door had no window. He wrapped his hand around the golden knob, turning it and pulling the door towards him. Brisk winds made him shiver in his thin sweatpants and knitted shirt; items that he had never owned.

 

There was no one on the porch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And take me disappearing through the smoke rings of my mind  
> Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves  
> The haunted, frightened trees, out to the windy beach  
> Far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow  
> Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free  
> Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands  
> With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves  
> Let me forget about today until tomorrow. 
> 
> "Mr. Tambourine Man"


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hello, again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> listen: geography is fake and I don't know anything about the American landscape, so just imagine another little world where things work differently than ours. Also: I have no idea if I am writing in character, or if I am just poetically talking out of my ass. Also x2: I don't really care. Enjoy! Have a good weekend!

There wasn’t much to busy himself with in the house. He sat by the fireplace and closed his eyes for small periods of time. He sat and waited for Hannibal, and the day seeped through his fingers like sand.

When, eventually, he would grow restless in his seated place, he would rise and travel down the length of the hallway and back into the room he had woken up in. A small dresser sat beside the queen bed, holding books. Some he recognized, some he didn’t. Some in English, some in texts he had never seen before. They were worn, spines well-used; they were someone's. They were probably Hannibal’s.

He peaked in the drawers of the large dresser placed against the wall, ruffling through delicately, so as not to disturb the placement of things, finding socks and shirts and soft jean material. Big, knitted sweaters filled one drawer all by themselves. Long sleeved tops with buttons, and without. There was an entire wardrobe inside.

 

The sun had gone down. The house was quiet, still. He had seen only himself and Abigail, if only for a moment before she traveled to the last room in the house and closed the door.

He worried, for several reasons. Where had she been this whole time, what had she seen, what had she heard. Question after question skated through his brain like a sheet of ice, like moving the record needle only for it to get stuck on another divot on the surface.

He wanted to speak to Hannibal. He wanted to figure out what was going on, where they were, where they would go from here. He couldn’t swim when the entire pool was black. He couldn’t call Jack when there was nothing to talk about. He couldn’t call a dead man. He couldn’t quite tell if he even wanted to call anyone; the thought like another little voice he had drilled into his head to keep him from jumping in the deepest end; there was no use for it at this point.

 

He needed to speak to him, with him, at him. Anything. It pushed him off balance, the silencing of his words that night. _I would take it back. If I could._ Like a door closing on him in the middle of a conversation; of an argument deep and wide and hard to get around or to bridge a pathway through to the other side. He felt like he had been buried that night, deep in the ground and suffocated, and something had been dug out of the ground that looked utterly different from the breathing body. There was his life in Virginia, his home drifting in the fog, his feet in the river, and his uncertainty in everything he had ever done. Even now he couldn’t divide one from the other: his law jargon playing into Jack’s hands; his eye contact, his blood on his knuckles, his calculating smiles placed before Hannibal’s eyes; they were all one in the same, the words coming from two mouths, from only his tongue. He didn’t know, he couldn’t.

Did Hannibal expect it to be simple, to be easy? Maybe it was, in the end. The length of rope swinging towards him like a walkway. The option to take it, to grasp it in his hands and wrap his fingers tight. The opportunity shown bluntly in his face, _we could disappear now, tonight_ , and ultimately ignored. Maybe he was a coward. 

 

Something similar to dread followed him on shaky feet as he left the room and entered the kitchen once again. At home he could’ve shaken it off, distracted himself from the ugliness of the feeling with a dog-run or a screwdriver in a damaged engine. Whiskey, no doubt, would suppress it. Perhaps he would have begun to rummage through the kitchen cabinets for liquor had he not walked in and seen Hannibal.

He stopped. He breathed in air that took hold of his lungs and squeezed. Perhaps he had been quiet enough to not alert the man in front of him of his presence, as his back faced him, after all. He stood still. He breathed in again. Seeing him here, in loose clothing, in the dark with candles and yellow bulbs hanging from strings, in a ‘70’s house in the woods with Abigail, he couldn’t process it. Utterly different from the images that flooded his mind up until his waking up: scenes of courtroom trials and nights spent sleeping with a bottle; rooms coated with blood and the silencing of every vibration, every ache. Never this. Running away was a pipe-dream.

But this wasn’t running away, was it? No, this was a hostage situation with familiar faces, and faces coming back from the dead. Christ, he couldn’t even think straight.

 

“Hi,” he said.  _Hi?_

“Good evening, Will,” was the reply from Hannibal as he turned slowly around to face Will with the side of his body. A skillet of fish rested in his hand, uncooked and unseasoned.

When had he come inside? Why was he turning to lock eyes with Will, why did he smile like he was greeting a stranger on the street, like he had practiced the gesture countless times.

 _What are you doing, where are we, why am I alive, why have we all come back from the dead so quietly?_   He wanted to ask all these things, every question. He wanted to tear something out of himself, of his chest, to run out the door. _Good evening, Will_ , like it was easy, like it rolled off the tongue.

 

“What are you making?”

“A Cajun style salmon recipe. Acquiring the ingredients proved more difficult than I had initially expected; dinner would have been ready by now.” He said everything with a smile. That soft smile, hiding something metallic and baseless in his voice. 

“Smells good,” he said. He could play the game. He could pretend.

“I thought it would remind you of home.” It was easy, it was buying time. And it meant nothing. 

“Where are we, Hannibal?” Will asked, finally, earning a pause from Hannibal as he poured oil onto the skillet.

“Oregon,” he said, eventually. “Dinner will be ready in thirty minutes time, Will, you might wish to busy yourself with other things.”

 

Polite dismissal struck him like a whip. No longer welcome in the kitchen, as he had once been. _I provide the ingredients, and you tell me what we should do with them_ , no more fingers smelling like basil and coating themselves in flour. **Kitchen off limits to guests** , it sang, and you are just a travelling man.

Resigned, he said: “I think we should talk, Hannibal,” his head wanting to pull his feet forward and retreat simultaneously.

“After dinner,” came the reply from Hannibal.

Clipped. Decided.

 _O_ _kay_ , he said back, _okay_. No problem. The other side of the country. A ring of bruises around his neck like a necklace pulled tight. _Okay._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well you look like yourself  
> But you're somebody else  
> Only it ain't on the surface  
> Well you talk like yourself  
> No, I hear someone else though  
> Now you're making me nervous.
> 
> "You're somebody else" Flora Cash


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “I forgive you, Will,”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Proofread, still please excuse any mistakes.

A small shower head and bathtub in the hallway bathroom was where he hid until the call for dinner came. The shower spray shot out with a violent force that would have caused him to jump back had he not felt like he was swimming inside his own head.

The hot water felt so damn good on his scalp, and he relished in the burn it gave, even against his neck as he turned around in the tiny tub to face the spray. When people said they wanted something to hurt, maybe out of punishment, maybe out of reckless futility, that was what he wanted. He wanted it to hurt, wanted it to distract from the wrongdoings of the past, to think of anything other than Hannibal’s empty stare in the kitchen, this kitchen and the previous, both.

But he felt cold under the heat now, felt like the water rushed straight through his body, never actually hitting him. He could slink down the shower drain with the slow-draining water and never be seen again.

God, his limbs felt heavy stepping out from the tub. Like jumping into the river with his clothes on.

He messed his hair with one of the folded towels by the sink, put his clothes back onto his damp skin, slipped on socks which didn’t belong to him, stared at himself in the mirror and made a desperate attempt to steel himself for Hannibal’s presence once more.

 

The thick smell of salmon and parsley drifted softly into the hallway and filled the small kitchen from wall to wall. It did remind him of home, home-home. Made him ache somewhere deep enough he couldn’t place the feeling anymore. He wished he could stamp it out like a spark from the fire pit.

Hannibal sat at the furthest end of the table from Will, Abigail in the middle seat, leaving the end chair for no other but Will. It killed him, the way this all looked: family dinner, everyone taking their proper seats. Nobody touched their forks; they were waiting for him.

_Let the fireplace send out sparks and catch the carpets on fire, please._

Dinner went by. Steam rose from the fish, lemon juice stung his scabbing lip and conversation had taken its leave hours ago and was milling somewhere out in the yard, refusing to return indoors. Will wanted to drag it inside, to seat it down on the last remaining chair and command it to speak. Speak, he’d say, speak. Or rather Conversation would take him by the hand and tell him to get a hold of himself, to stop asking for back doors to be created just for him.

 

Dishes were stacked in the sink, candles blown out. Abigail returned a smile at Hannibal's “thank you”, and steered herself towards Will. He ached to look at her so candidly, so undisguised in his expression. He could see those last moments so clearly in his mind, now… how her eyes had grown fearfully wide as he threw accusations. She was a child, and he wished desperately to bring her to his chest or to send her some place safer than this. To some other world.

Her fingers were placed softly on the thick of his arm under the guise of something close to reassurance, or comfort, and then she was walking to the room down the hallway once again. As soon as she was here, she was gone.  

 

The wind up radio sang out a little tune from the window sill, reminiscent of the morning hours. How he wished for the songs to speak for him. How he longed for it to be easy. What did easy sound like?

 

“Why didn’t you leave, after I called?” He breached the silence first, anxious to find things out, the things he knew not how to dig for.

 

“We couldn’t leave without you,” Hannibal repeated. “Are you satisfied with the way the teacup that I shattered came back together?” Everything was a jab at him, it seemed. A cold stare. Though he couldn’t blame him for it.

 

_Of course I am._ “Why didn’t you just tell me…”

 

“It was to be a surprise for our departure. The one I had originally planned. A symbol of new life. Abigail’s rebirth in your life and… the rebirth of our own. Yours and mine,” Hannibal said.

 

The words sat thick in his throat, and pained Will to have to hear so clearly and so personally. He wanted to apologize, wanted to be angry.

 

“I would have…” He began, yet could not find the words to finish with.

 

Hannibal bridged the gap. “You would have joined me out of obligation and feelings of responsibility for Abigail. Not for me. Definitely not for yourself.”

 

He didn’t know, couldn’t know all the other things he thought about, the way he felt, the things he felt. The way he knew how to blind himself from it all.

 

“That night, at dinner, you gave me the chance to take it back,” he said. The understanding of Abigail’s reemergence lying in the air, unspoken. “What had you planned to do? That night in Baltimore?” The night with Alana bleeding on the pavement, with his hands on a slowly forgotten gun.

 

“What I planned has no weight on what unfurled. Just as what I planned holds no weight on what did not come to pass. There are many things I could have done, many things I could still effectuate now from a place of kneaded possibilities, yet choose not to.”

 

_Killing me would have been just as simple as doing the opposite,_ he thought. Where did he stand? Where did Hannibal stand? Was he capable of grief, of regret? Perhaps not regret, no, he had said so before. Would he have mourned him? Was he mourning him now?

 

“You’re disappointed.” He knew he was understating it, knew it reached no closer to the truth than any other word he could have supplemented it with. The betrayal, the lies, he knew he knew when he had seen his face that night. It all must have sparked a number of states and sentiments Will grew weary of just from entertaining the thought.

 

“I forgive you, Will,” Hannibal said. His face stiff and concealing something frightful he had decided to keep leashed. In some cathartic way, Will wished he would release it.  “But forgiveness,” he continued, “can seldom go so far when one party stands on the precipice with his foot dancing over the edge. Forgiveness is stepping away from the glint of the rail, from the fall of the cliff, and returning back into the house.”

 

He saw right through him, and Will could feel his eyes trailing his insides like a spreading virus. It angered him, the transparency, the windows into himself he had opened for Hannibal. Seeing everything, those eyes knew the reproach Will held for certain things concerning him. Abigail’s “death”, allowing him to forget himself in his heated madness, Beverly. These things, moments, people, all mattered in some fashion. Mattered greatly and heavily to him, whilst proving themselves to be the last few remaining tethers to the man he had been, just months ago. He wanted to pull the trigger, to put the blade to Hannibal’s neck and pull away, to drown himself in the stick of it.

He wanted to be the good fisherman, to lure him in, but at some point the rod had become his arms, his hands, and the lure his tongue. Every word sounding less and less like it had come from his mouth, but undeniably he knew he had spoken it all. The taste of flesh on his tongue, the crack of Randall’s- of Hannibal’s- face in the dark. “It’s a courtship,” Alana had said, the word leaving a sticky distaste in his mouth that cold night. He was no longer the same. Funny how that can happen, can hit you square in the face with miles of distance between the now-you and the old-you.

 

Moments of silence passed through them, thick and uncomfortable in the spaces between. Heat from the crackling fireplace hung in the air and traveled into the kitchen where they both stood beside the table, a two arm's length away from the other. Then, Hannibal reached for something in his front pocket. His hand pulled out to reveal a glinting object that he placed on the table, only after holding it still to gaze on for a moment. A linoleum knife. An invitation. A confession.

Will could picture it in his mind, the blade passing through his skin, the blood, the smell of it, the heat of it. He pictured it taking some part of himself away. Eviscerating, gutting. The like of which he had done to Hannibal, in one way or another. He wished to know how he had found out, what had broken through the carefully crafted screen he had put up, and yet in some silent way he knew it didn’t matter all the same in the end. There were here now, because and despite it.

 

“The wrong thing being the right thing to do… was too ugly a thought.”

 

“And now,” Hannibal began, taking his eyes off the knife and placing his gaze directly in Will’s path. Inching closer, ever so slightly, one foot in front of the other until a double arm’s length distance became one. “Now, what is the right thing to do?” He asked, echoing Will’s words.

 

“I don’t know.” He felt the need to cry, felt the need to cut something out of the man in front of him, to prove something, to resolve something inside himself, it was becoming tiring. So, instead he smiled.

 

“Get some rest. We have a flight to catch tomorrow,” Hannibal said, as he stepped away from the table, towards the living room.

 

The lack of choice on Will’s part struck him, if only momentarily, curiosity taking over eventually. “Where?” He asked.

 

Hannibal smiled, melancholia painting his face. “Florence, Will. Goodnight.”

 

Footsteps on the wood traveled behind Will, leaving him alone in the kitchen, the radio still leaking out its crackling sounds. _Goodnight_ , he whispered, to the empty space around him. He felt drunk.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I felt good about this chapter when I had finished writing it, but now I feel slightly unnerved. I'll upload it anyway.   
> FYI: I haven't written much in advance as of yet, but I do have an idea of how I want everything to play out. The wait time in between uploads shouldn't be more than a week, I'm guessing. Then again, maybe I'll get a job soon lol.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Plane rides suck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is quite short.

Intentions of clearing past events and of making sense of it all danced around his head like a parade set out to mock him. He understood not much more of the situation he found himself in than when he had woken to Abigail in his room. Only that he lived in a shared space of multiplied duality with Hannibal, the pair of them lost somewhere, adrift at the furthest ends of the sea. 

He yearned to drown the man, but also to tread the water with him. He yearned for many things, mourned many more, overtly the friendship they had shared, however real or otherwise it had in fact been at the time. Hannibal needn’t say it out loud, needn’t point it out, the fact that he had shared as freely and unforgiving as he had with none other was clear to Will, and the repercussions of such a fact shook him. 

This man, with such an unfamiliar look to him, starkly different clothes... this man guiding Abigail down the terminal with her lemonade in hand, was his friend. This man who had nearly suffocated him with his own hands was his friend. Like all things one knows somehow to be unspeakable, he recoiled at the thought and struck it down. 

 

They were embarking on the plane. They were walking in front of him, tickets in hand, his own in his pocket. He could leave, now. He could go home. But where was home, now? A crime scene? Taped off? Missing persons flyers on light posts, he could see it clearly. He pictured himself going back. They would ask him questions, they would want to know, but he wouldn’t tell. No, he knew he wouldn’t, with Abigail in the cross-hairs. Yet, even without Abigail… some part of him wished for Hannibal to run. Additionally, some part of him wanted to run with him. And suddenly he was on the plane, vibrating sound of the engine shaking him awake. 

 

He asked where they were now, Hannibal replying that the plane had been airborne for an hour. He eyed Will worriedly, if only for a moment, before turning back to his novel. The flight to Florence included two stops, one in London, and one in Munich. The first plane ride would be 9 or so more hours from here on out. He put his head back against the seat, gazed out the window at the white of the sky and retreated somewhere further back inside himself. 

 

The time leading up to the departure from Hannibal’s Oregon home was strange: Abigail sat on the edge of the bathroom tub as Hannibal cut her hair, eventually giving her satisfactory bangs, not that her image would probably be questioned, she was officially, more or less, dead. Even so.

Hannibal, deliberating on whether or not to cut his own, had decided upon simply styling it differently, now long strands of hair swept down messily over his forehead. Glasses with a plain frame slipped in as the last piece of his ensemble, joined by a knitted sweater with an old and sticky zipper down the middle. He looked more like Will than anything else, now. 

 

Will had simply given himself a clean shave, and a quick trim to his hair, allowing it to flow more than to hang in disorder. He declined the aid of Hannibal that morning, the thought of his hands and a pair of scissors so close to his head compelled him to laugh silently at the ridiculous image… and the connotations of it.

 

They drove down to San Francisco’s airport early in the morning, leaving them all with time to spend or waste underneath the airport’s vast and high sky-lit ceilings. Time seemed to slide away like water, and now here they were, Hannibal by his side, Abigail two seats ahead of them, and a 10 hour plane ride holding him in place. 

 

He kept his eyes shut, trying to sink into sleep or a peaceful memory somewhere, instead memories of his house and his dogs invaded his mind. _Shit, shit, the dogs_. 

Hannibal noticed his panic, shut his book against his knees, and turned slightly to enter Will’s space as if to ask what was wrong. 

 

“My dogs,” He said, and nothing else. Hannibal nodded, understanding, and told him he had made a call, had a friend who would make sure they went to good homes, to his home, Will couldn’t make it out in the midst of his overwhelm. A hand was placed on his forearm, as if to say  _ steady, steady _ . 

 

He laughed at himself, the panic only really rising to the surface at the mere remembrance of his dogs. Even though they were his family, in one sense or the other. He could hardly blame himself. 

But if he couldn’t resolve the fact that he would most likely never see them again now, _lord_ , the anxiety would never go away. 

 

Glancing towards Hannibal, the expression which painted his face, compassion, he thought to himself I  _ trust you, despite myself.  _

The hand placed upon his skin retreated. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> But I keep thinking  
> Something's bound to go wrong  
> But she looks in my eyes  
> And makes me realize  
> And she says "Don't worry baby"
> 
> Beach Boys really goes well with Hannibal, eh?


End file.
